I havn't been on MSN Messenger in a long while now, whilst it still remains current i feel that there are better ways of communicating now, take Facebook for example, it is a much better all round multimedia format.

MSN Messenger essentially is an online chat function but with a difference as you are not entering a chat room and talking with complete strangers but instead you add a person's personalised email address and so you have to know the individuals you are talking to, for example friends and friendly. When you add someone they are informed of this by a pop up box saying 'suchandsuch@hotmail.com has added you...accept....decline' so it takes mutual consent for two people to converse over msn, so for that reason it is somewhat safer and more private than your average chat room.

However getting back to my original statement with facebook and myspace now, you can chat online, leave offline messages and pictures, videos, edit your own page aswell as a thousand other things. MSN did launch a similar thing called MSN Space but it just didn't quite talk off the same. I think MSN has it's uses, mainly for those people who do not have the time or inclination to set up a facebook page. But ultimately, i think it will become archaic, much like the video player once the dvd player came along.